 Hello everybody and welcome to the live screening event today's presentation is about the Rural Community Development Fund, which is a Welsh Government operated grant scheme funded under the Welsh Government Rural Communities Rural Development Program 2014 to 2020, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government. I know that many of you listening today will already be familiar with the Rural Community Development Fund, but just in case there are some listeners who don't know about it yet, I'll start by giving a brief introduction. I'm then going to describe the application process and we're going to focus on the expression of interest stage and take a detailed look at the selection criteria used. I'll go through some general points, hints and tips about how to make the most of the expression of interest form and then focus down on each of the selection criteria in turn. James is then going to cover the tackling poverty selection criteria. So we hope that you're going to find this presentation helpful and that it will encourage you to submit an expression of interest to the current open bidding round which closes on the 30th of June 2016. You can ask us questions via Twitter during this live presentation. If you experience any technical problems during the presentation, don't worry because a recording will be made available afterwards. So the Rural Community Development Fund offers grants for a wide range of interventions designed to prevent and mitigate the impact of poverty in rural communities, improving conditions which can lead to future jobs and growth. The three objectives of the Rural Community Development Fund are to promote social inclusion, poverty reduction and economic development in rural areas, to help those most deprived in rural Wales and those who have limited scope to change their own circumstances, to develop the resilience and capability of rural communities so that they are better able to cope with and adapt to change. The full scheme guidance document and the expression of interest criteria and application form can be found on the Rural Community Development Fund page on the Welsh Government's website. So anything we say in this presentation needs to be taken in the context of those documents. The presentation doesn't replace the main scheme documents. So the Rural Community Development Fund covers all of the sub-measures that were offered by the European Commission's measure called Basic Services and Village Renewal. I don't intend to go through the list of activities that can be funded as I expect most of you are familiar with the scheme guidance. So most of the funding that's available under the Rural Community Development Fund is for investment in small-scale infrastructure. The Rural Development Program is only one of the four European structural and investment funds and large-scale interventions would be better signposted to the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. There's also funding available for studies under measure 7.6 of Rural Community Development Fund connected to maintenance, restoration and upgrading of cultural and natural heritage. Projects funded under the Rural Community Development Fund don't normally take longer than three years to be implemented and the Rural Community Development Fund is targeted geographically at Rural and Service Centre wards in Wales. If you are in doubt about the eligible wards, please do check the scheme guidance for a list. So it's possible for an applicant to submit expressions of interest under more than one sub-measure and or to submit multiple expressions of interest under the same sub-measure, as long as those are for different project proposals which could stand on their own so aren't linked to other expressions of interest. So let's give you an example. A community could apply for under measure 7.4 to remodel a village hall to add an extra room for a co-opodus clinic and to be used by other peripatetic healthcare professionals. They could then put another expression of interest in under measure 7.2 to install a biomass boiler in the main hall to reduce energy costs and use locally available fuel. They could then put another expression of interest in under measure 7.7 to convert a redundant building into a biomass store. So you can see how a community could use multiple sub-measures and put in multiple expressions of interest to get to their desired aim. So all applicants are directed in our scheme guidance to discuss their proposals with the leader local action group for their area before submitting an expression of interest to the Welsh government. There are a number of reasons for this. The leader local action groups have funding to engage with communities in their geographical area to build the capacity of these communities to identify opportunities and barriers to development facing them and to support them through pre-commercial piloting of potential solutions. So it might be that the applicant to the Rural Community Development Fund would benefit from some capacity building work via the local action group or a pre-commercial pilot or a feasibility study before they submit the Rural Community Development Fund application. By getting in touch with your leader local action group at an early stage potential Rural Community Development Fund applicants might also benefit from accessing networks and contacts via the local action groups, which might help them to identify sources of match funding or to add value to the project idea. One of the selection criteria we ask you to address in an expression of interest to Rural Community Development Fund explicitly asks you to explain how your project proposal contributes to or complements the leader local development strategy. So if you get in touch with your local action group they can help you to see how your proposal fits which might strengthen your answer. Our appraisal process involves sharing all expressions of interest with the relevant local action groups and asking them to tell us whether or not the project proposed fits with their local development strategy and if not why not. For the Rural Community Development Fund the Welsh Government has a transparent two-stage application process. Stage one is to submit a narrative expression of interest. Stage two for those applicants successful at expression of interest stage involves the submission of a project application. Expressions of interest submitted by the deadline in any expression of interest round are assessed, scored and ranked in order of merit according to our published selection criteria. So here they are the selection criteria first in Welsh and then in English. You will see that for the Rural Community Development Fund there are six selection criteria with a scoring range of 0 to 5 and for each selection criterion there is a waiting factor then applied. So the maximum possible score weighted score is 105 so the quality threshold is 25 points. So any expression of interest must score 25 or above to be allowed budget permitting to progress to stage 2. The available budget is applied to the ranked list and those scoring highly enough are invited to progress to stage 2. So in the first round the first expression of interest round for Rural Community Development Fund which closed on the 31st of January 2016 the Welsh Government received 151 expressions of interest. The budget was heavily oversubscribed and 71 expressions of interest were invited to progress to the full application stage. So now we're going to look at the expression of interest form itself. We've made a few amendments to the form so if you applied in the first expression of interest window you will notice some changes. So for the project description section there is now a 250 word limit. It was 50 words in the first expression of interest window. Please can you use this section to tell us about your proposed project? What investment you propose to make with the Rural Community Development Fund money and why? Please stick to clearly describing just the project you're proposing for Rural Community Development Fund funding not for example the whole of the work of a country park or the whole community vision for the next 10 years. Project location please make sure as I mentioned earlier that you are in an eligible ward. With the budget figures full cost breakdowns need to be provided at stage two application stage and with the new form we have an initial indication of submeasure fit so you have to choose which of the submeasures you think your project fits under but don't worry if you get this wrong it's just an indication. There's a tick box because sharing of expressions of interest with the local action group is a mandatory part of the process so this time there's a tick box included on the form for you to give permission to the Welsh Government to share your expression of interest with the leader local action group. So the expression of interest is a word document with no attachments and it's emailed to the Welsh Government by 2359 on the day of the deadline and it can be emailed by a third party if the applicant can't but in that case we will have to check with the applicant unless there's an e-signature. With regard to the applicant's business status every applicant must be a legal entity so for example a registered cooperative, a charity or a company etc so a group of people who have a terms of reference but no legal structure wouldn't be eligible to apply and would have to find another body which is a legal entity to make the application for them. So I'm going to look at some general points about the expression of interest form now. We want you to succeed and we've described in the expression of interest form what you need to do to score well. Don't exhaust yourself on the first answer and run out of steam. We received a fair few expressions of interest which gave pages and pages of text for the first box and then said not applicable for all the other boxes so remember that points are allocated by answer so to score you have to answer in the correct question in the correct box. Don't use the first free text box to provide extra pages of project description answer the question that we're asking. Quite a few applicants invented an extra box before the first criterion which they use to write a more expansive project description so we've now allowed 250 words for this in a separate section for project description so we hope that applicants won't feel the need to invent any extra boxes this time. If we gave you a point for inventiveness then that would be good but we don't actually score anything in a box you've created. There's no need as well to embed pictures and diagrams this can take up so many megabytes that sometimes your expression of interest will just bounce back so the Rural Community Development Fund is a fund to support community led projects. We want to know how the idea for the project proposal came about and the first selection criterion is about effective community engagement during the development of the proposal so has the applicant identified who the stakeholders are so who can affect or be affected by the project proposal and did they engage them using the appropriate techniques for those stakeholders how did that engagement then inform the development of the proposal so it's not enough for example to say my business plan said I needed to do this to expand my business we're looking for how have you done that wider community engagement and this question should be answered in the past tense so how were stakeholders engaged during the development of the proposal before you submitted the expression of interest not how are you intending to engage them in the future also don't just give us a list of stakeholders so for example we consulted the national park authority we want to know what they said and how this then affected your project proposal the second of the scoring criterion is additionality and strategic compliance so applicants need to explain how the project is additional does it duplicate any existing provisions or is it going to provide something over and above what's already available applicants should explain how their proposed project contributes to the strategic aims and objectives of the rural community development fund and if you're in doubt have a look at paragraphs four to eleven in the scheme guidance please remember that we don't want you to talk about the six priorities for rural development which the whole of the rural development program serves or the focus areas it's the aims and objectives of the rural community development fund itself that you're applying to applicants also need to explain how their proposed project contributes to relevant Welsh government strategies for example the tackling poverty action plan or subject specific strategies then the last thing that you need to do is to describe how your project proposal contributes to or complements the leader local development strategy and again contact your local action group if you're unsure what this is if you miss out any of the things above you can't score more than one point so this is multiplied by four for the waiting to give you a maximum weighted score for this section of four out of a possible 20 so do yourself a checklist and just tick the things off as you cover them so thank you for your attention I hope this part's been helpful I'm going to hand you over now to my colleague James who's going to take you through the four remaining selection criteria thank you gail um yeah my name's James Burgess I work in the tackling poverty division a big part of our role within Welsh government and beyond is to ensure that we engage with colleagues across government to ensure that there's a focus on tackling poverty and supporting those but most vulnerable in society across different policies and programmes we've been really really fortunate and grateful to gail and her team that we've really been able to do that in a really integrated way across the rural community development programme our role has been to quality assure the scores that have been given by gail and her team so my team has gone across all of the scores to look at to look at that specifically look at the four tackling poverty criteria and quality assure those scores and we did make changes in some cases the aspects of poverty which we've focused on within the rural community development fund criteria are four of the issues which are particularly prevalent in rural communities among people who live in rural areas who are affected by poverty we did that specifically we appreciate that there are other aspects of poverty which also affect people in rural areas however we wanted to focus on those areas where they're disproportionately likely to be affected so just some common feedback themes from me first which I know gail's covered some of this actually but we wanted to make sure we wanted to see that it was easy to give you marks to ensure you fully understand the question and your evidence links to the required criteria and part of that as gail's mentioned was about putting the relevant evidence in the appropriate criteria box to make it really easy for us to see where the different aspects of the project are influencing the different aspects of the poverty criteria that have been set and to really ensure that projects support those who are living on low incomes that was the real focus as this is a tackling poverty fund we wanted to ensure that you were really those bits those expressions of interest were really focusing on those on low incomes and gail's already mentioned that we wanted to see appropriate links with the tackling poverty action plan and potentially the child poverty strategy of well both of which are available on the Welsh Government website and some of the projects made really good links to some of the Welsh Government's tackling poverty programs I appreciate that in some areas some of these programs are not necessarily available and there to link with but where but some certainly did make links with those and where those programs do exist I think there are opportunities for you to make links to them when when considering bids and considering your cases not all of the projects will meet necessarily all four of the tackling poverty criteria and that is okay though you need to show that you've given consideration to it I think it's it's better to show that you've given consideration to it and been honest about some places where maybe it doesn't really focus on fuel poverty for example and it's best just to be honest about that rather than try and put a square peg in a round hole um so what I was planning to do was to just take through each of the four tackling poverty criteria what we meant um around each of those criteria and then some of the some just a little bit of specific feedback around each one so in terms of access to services in in terms of rural poverty access to services something that really it's kind of obvious really but it is really deeply affects people who are living on low incomes struggling to get by if you like in terms of accessing those services which a lot of people take for granted particularly maybe urban areas where things are on your doorstep so supporting additional access to basic services particularly for those people on low incomes and that could that wasn't necessarily in a specific area it could be transport access to local health services childcare post offices credit union sports facilities there are a number of different areas in which access to services could be could be picked up on um but what it doesn't mean for example is access to a venue or to provide parking as such is about providing access to a service and this can include supporting engagement with services to prevent feelings of isolation and partaking in local community activities so I would say in general terms um in most cases this criteria was was well met was well evidenced by I think people understood what what it was we were after um and that that did come across broadly speaking in the answers that were provided um projects will score more highly and did score more highly when they particularly focused on how they could help those living on low incomes just to reiterate that point um and it is a it's a wider point really but an important point is that applicant applications also need to consider where they're up where they're in sure they are in line with the criteria guidance some people did go off on tangents around compared to what was actually within the guidance it's really important to stick to that guidance because that's what's being scored against so in terms of fuel poverty um households in fuel poverty will be impacted by income levels fuel prices and energy efficiency of the home often low income households pay disproportionately more for goods and services including fuel they're more likely to be on a higher energy tariff and that's probably extent that is that that certainly is accentuated in rural communities where often housing stock is poorer maybe off grid more reliance on oil things like that so so it's a particular issue in rural communities support can be provided by encouraging access to cheaper energy tariffs or household bills support for lack of transport and transport costs and raising awareness of energy efficiency and advice services within the limits of a capital grant is also important so i think it's important to not just focus on households necessarily there's also the issues of fuel poverty around transport which is something that um perhaps could have been drawn out more in some places um often information which could be used as evidence for this criteria was contained within other parts of the application and not drawn out picking up on my point earlier where there was information perhaps on fuel poverty but it wasn't necessarily in the fuel poverty criteria box so it would be really helpful if that was the case and evidence examples could be expanded around some of the issues of educational opportunities which came out in some applications more a lot more than others and also that issue of transport and making that link there and direct links with fuel poverty were often a little bit limited or or tenuous links were made in some cases moving on to in-work poverty in-work poverty is again something which is more prevalent in rural communities where wages tend to be lower unemployment also tends to be lower but in-work poverty as a result of those lower wages is something that is a lot more prevalent in rural communities jobs growth in a strong economy are really essential to improve the lives of people on low income households it kind of goes without saying really but that sort of sustainable employment and full-time employment are particularly important and getting a decent wage support can be provided by encouraging a range of activities including supporting second earners into work so specifically targeting second earners perhaps through childcare provision as as an example of that and supporting young people into employment is really important and increasing skills to enable people to secure in-work progression i think we appreciate that this could be a difficult for some projects to link to and therefore some of the links which are made were a little tenuous but there were links made and we felt that there were opportunities to expand on some of the links in some certain places so for example there's the issue of community benefits this is a capital programme there there are often building works in a number of the examples and there are perhaps opportunities in some places more than others but more than we saw i think for community benefits to be included to think about increasing skills in the local community to think about apprenticeships and to think about the nature of contracts that you're entered into applications do not have to focus on job creation but to look for opportunities to increase skills and progress in work digital inclusion being online can improve everyday lives including saving money helping individuals find work and reducing social isolation it's it's kind of a given that sort of digital inclusion is really important but there are certain people who are much more likely to be digitally excluded older people disabled people those living in social housing those are unemployed and working age economically and active people are those most likely to be digitally excluded and projects should consider how they can support people most likely to be digitally excluded sometimes we felt that there was a little bit of a lack of understanding of digital exclusion and what we meant by that and what exactly it was that we were thinking about so for example some people were focused on digital technology to think about IT equipment they were going seeking to purchase for example without really focusing on how they might support those who are digitally excluded to to become included and support should be given to those who are most likely to be digitally excluded finally just to sort of wrap up really around those four tackling poverty criteria a number of projects have really good examples of engagement with local services and the needs of the locality a good range of consultation exercises and links to local and national strategies and that was fantastic to see some of those projects really did demonstrate excellent considerations and understanding of the needs of people living in low-income households and those excellent and innovative projects from my team's perspective in tackling poverty really link well to our work and we'd be keen to actually if if they are projects that are eventually taken forward we'd be keen to engage with some of those projects some of the applications were frustrating in the sense that we could see through the expressions of interest good projects in principle really should have been ticking better than some of them did some of those tackling poverty criteria there were there were real opportunities for people to make links to those tackling poverty criteria more strongly than some of them did so those ones in particular I think that some of the feedback we've given to Gail on her team and that's been passed on in those cases and I think that is it from me so I'll hand you back to Gail well we'd like to thank you all for taking the time to join us today the presentation will be available for you to view again afterwards through the Wales Rural Network pages of the Welsh Government website I'd also really like to thank the local action groups who've hosted sessions in their offices for people to come together in their areas to listen to this so thank you and thanks also to James and to the Wales Rural Network support unit for hosting the event we hope to hold more of these live streaming events in the future if you've got any questions if you could please email them to the rural community development fund inbox which is rcdf at wales.gsi.gov.uk we've not received any questions during the presentation so if you do have questions afterwards or think of anything that you want to explore further just send those questions to the email address so thank you very much goodbye